We'll Always Have Parrots(80)

I nodded. Typhani seemed to find that satisfactory and went off after fluttering her fingertips at me, the way a child would wave bye-bye.

So whoever sent the QB’s hate mail was taking some pains to make sure the contents arrived in good condition.

Not hate mail at all. Hate comics; I’d bet anything. And the shred of paper she’d been holding had probably been part of one of them.

I sat back a little—far enough that I could still keep an eye on the booth, but where passing customers couldn’t see what I was holding—and pulled out the photos.





Chapter 38




Kevin and the Kinko’s staff had done a nice job. I stuffed the 8×10 blowups of the QB’s body back into the envelope to save for Dad and concentrated on the two shots of the comic strip.

I’d done a good job, too. Or maybe I should give credit to Kevin again, for picking out such a good digital camera. Every line of the drawing was as sharp and crisp as if I had the original in front of me. Looking at it brought back something else: the drawing had been done on nubby-textured paper, off-white with colored flecks in it. I could see the flecks as clear as anything, and the faint shadows from the nubs.

Some kind of specialty drawing stock. All the artists I knew were particular to the point of superstition about their tools. They’d go to the ends of the earth to track down their favorite brands of pens, pencils, and drawing paper. Not that I didn’t understand. I felt the same way about my metal-working tools. So the paper was probably a useful clue for the police, who had the resources to identify it, track down where it was sold, perhaps even discover which suspects had bought it.

All it told me was that this wasn’t from a published comic. They generally used plain white paper, and much cheaper paper at that.

So I was looking at either an original, unpublished cartoon by Dilley, or a very plausible imitation.

And if I had to bet on it, I’d say the real thing. A real Dilley. I couldn’t prove it. Couldn’t even explain how I knew. But just as I didn’t need to look for a maker’s mark to see whether I’d done a piece of ironwork or whether it belonged to one of my blacksmith friends, I could tell Dilley had drawn this, and not some skilled imitator.

And then again…it felt different. In the published comics, the artist seemed to like Porfiria, despite her flaws. There was a strange innocence to her promiscuity, and a certain glow to her features.

But this Porfiria looked different. A faint piggish look to the eyes. A slight suggestion of blowsiness. And was that an ink blob, or had the artist drawn a large, dark speck stuck between her front teeth?

It still looked a lot like the QB. To me, even more like her than the published comics. Of course, maybe I wasn’t the best judge, since I thoroughly disliked the QB.

Maybe that was it. In the published comics, Porfiria was Tammy Jones, and Ichabod Dilley clearly worshipped her. But in this sketch, though apparently no later, she had become Tamerlaine Wynncliffe-Jones, and he’d learned to hate her. What had she done to turn him against her? And did it have anything to do with her death?

Or for that matter, with his?

“Found something interesting?”

I started, and clutched the photo closer to my chest as I glanced up to see Steele looking at me with curiosity.

“No, just looking at some possible new PR stills for Michael,” I said. That seemed the most plausible explanation for why I’d been so absorbed in studying something from an envelope clearly marked “Photos—do not bend!”

Then again, maybe it was time to enlist another brain and another set of eyes. I longed to talk things over with Michael, but he was off dutifully schmoozing with his fans. Maybe I should stop being so cagy and bounce my ideas off someone. Failing Michael, Steele would do as well as anyone. Better than most in fact. Someone who wasn’t part of the TV show crowd might have a more balanced perspective on the whole thing.

I glanced back at the photos, and this time I noticed something else. When I’d studied the pictures in the camera, the image was so small that I could barely decipher the words of Porfiria’s dialogue. In the blowup, I could see that I’d misread it. She wasn’t saying “Bring in the Vagan ambassador.” It was “Bring in the Viagran ambassador.”

Viagra hadn’t been invented in 1972. I didn’t know precisely when it came on the market, but surely no earlier than the 90s. Probably the late 90s.

Which meant that no matter how sure I was that Ichabod Dilley had drawn it, that just wasn’t possible.

Or was it?

“He’s alive,” I said.

“What’s that?” Steele said.

I slipped the photos back into the envelope and then shoved that into my haversack. Then I took a deep breath. Time to see how this sounds when I say it aloud.